The books you read shape the books you write, and nothing has influenced me more than mysteries, right from the very start. The first books I remember reading—after the Madeline and Winnie-the-Pooh years—were mysteries. Encyclopedia Brown and Jupiter Jones were the gateway adventures leading to Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. I loved them for the…
The supernatural thriller, to me, has always been a small sliver of a genre, one that takes a careful hand. Some books tip into straight horror, while others bury their scary happenings in innuendo and the feeling that something bad—really bad—is going to happen. Some read like mysteries, while others are psychological portraits of haunted…
She earned a Ph.D. at 23 and had too much to say to be constrained under just one name. We're sad to share the news of the passing, at age 85, of a wonderful writer who became an MWA Grandmaster in 1998. From the Post-Tribune's obituary: Mertz wrote more than 35 mysteries under the name…
Prolific author, historian, and MWA Grandmaster Elizabeth Peters, aka Barbara Michaels and also nonfiction’s Barbara Mertz, knows how to create a popular series. Her most famous is the one featuring 19th-century amateur Egyptologist and archaeologist Amelia Peabody, which later involves her husband, Emerson, and even her grown children’s adventures. Are fans simply desperate for another…
